Some readers here at PCaL may be interested to know that the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and UNDP Nordic Office are running a two-hour seminar (which is to be live streamed on 7 March) on demographics, ageing and youth, subjects of vital importance for church, NGO, government and other community leaders. The blurb reads:

Today, half of the world’s population is under 25 years of age, while 11% of the world’s population is aged 60 and over. The share of young and elderly will rise significantly by 2030, when the world’s population is estimated to reach 8 billion. There are concerns about the capacities of societies to address the challenges of this demographic shift. The crucial question is therefore – how can we prepare for this demographic challenge? How can access to education, employment, health care and basic social protection be secured for the young and the elderly?

The UN Secretary General’s report emphasizes that the demographic shift requires a transformative change towards inclusive and sustainable development to facilitate for the needs of the young and the elderly. Despite this, some advocate that there is still a large risk that these groups are excluded from the new development agenda if they are not identified in specific goals or indicators. How do we make sure that the young and the elderly are subjects and actors, not objects, of the new development agenda that will be formulated?

The seminar is concerned to address questions like:

• What societal changes will need to come into effect when youth no longer can support the growing elderly generation, and whose responsibility are these changes?
• How can discrimination of both the youth and of the elderly be reversed, e.g. in access to power to influence their own situation?
• How can we benefit from the ‘demographic dividend’ in Africa?
• How do ‘lost generations’ – due to migration, disease and conflict – affect development? How do we build a universal and sustainable development agenda taking the diverse population dynamics into account?

Further details about the seminar, including speakers and registration, can be found here.

[Image: source]